Hundreds of students in the Santa Maria area Friday participated in a community gallery event where the students and their artwork were celebrated.
The event, called "Nuesta Loteria," was hosted at the Santa Maria Fairpark in Santa Maria.
The students were assigned the task of creating art that they feel very passionate about — from fictional scenes to real community issues.
The students were meant to critically analyze the traditional game of Loteria and develop their own Loteria cards as paintings. (Loteria is a game of chance, similar to Bingo.)
"I feel like there's a lot of lack of representation within the art industry, especially in the Santa Maria Valley that isn't really represented," Carlos Gonzalez said, who is a senior at Righetti High School. "And I feel like this is just such a powerful event that we get to really showcase and hear the voices of our local students that have these experiences in these moments that happen to them."
"So it's really, really amazing."
It took the students three to four months to complete their pieces of art.
It was a collaborative event between The Cultural and Creative Arts Center of the Santa Maria Valley, also known as Corazón del Pueblo, and the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District (SMJUHSD).
The Nuestra Loteria program was created in 2021 to "help students critically analyze the traditional game of Loteria and develop their own Loteria cards as paintings," according to a press release sent by Abraham Melendrez, who is the executive director of Corazón del Pueblo.
